It's Not About Us
by LavvyLav
Summary: This isn't about us. It was never about us, Draco...We can't forget where our loyalties lie...You will always be a pureblood...and I will always be Mudblood Granger.
1. It's Not About Us

Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine. Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy likewise belong to J.K. Rowling.

Summary: In a war-torn world, Hermione Granger falls in love with an old enemy, and loses more than her bitter feelings.

**It's Not About Us**

The sun blazed despite the winter chill. The ground was unseasonably snowless leaving a despondent memory of summertime that taunted as the winter wind blew.

And somewhere a girl was waking, opening her eyes to an artificially lit room. If only it would snow, or the ice would melt from the pavement. But nature was caught in an elemental limbo, refusing to do either.

And somewhere the girl was dressing, pulling her socks on, right foot first, then the left foot. They make her feet colder, icy from being left by the window. Quietly she makes her way downstairs, not wanting to break the primordial silence of the igloo temperatured house.

And somewhere her heart was breaking. Somewhere, far away, her heart was crying out. Not here, not here in the frozen household, but somewhere farther. Somewhere beyond the frost covered windows. Somewhere far removed from this barren chill. Perhaps if her heart were here, it would be warmer. Perhaps if she had kept her heart it would not be breaking now. But she can feel it, can feel it breaking, shattering, like icicles falling from the roof.

The Muggle community felt the aftershock of the war as well as in the Wizarding world, but Hermione Granger chose to reside here. She thought that perhaps it would be easier to forget, if she left the place that had caused her so much pain.

She was wrong.

She feels like someone else. She feels cold and the lack of heat does not dull the pain, does not make it less real. It makes it even more vivid. The pain blazes with a fierceness that startlingly contrasts the cold. Maybe if she could be as warm as this burning pain she could match it's heat and feel it less, but now she is pulled towards her desperation. The silence is all too terrifying. It knows things, knows everything, and feels nothing. If only she could feel nothing. She tries to, she tries to separate her mind from her body. As long as she can keep pretending this misery will pass, it is bearable.

In a sane world, a rational world, he was her opposite.

In a twisted world, he was her ideal. He was the inverted reflection of her heart. His thoughts were hers in a fragmented rearrangement. His feelings and ideas paralleled her own. Black to white, front to back, they matched. His shattered dreams called to her soul, and her soul cried to anyone who would listen. Undiscriminating, their entire beings drew each other, in a dangerous magnetic attraction. Positive to negative, plus to minus, their relationship was electric, and, like electricity, it was dangerous.

She had been fighting for so long that she had forgotten what it was like to relax. She thought she had forgotten how to love, that she would never be so weak as to betray any human emotion. She thought she was impervious, that nothing could touch her.

But he opened her up, brought her back into the light, drew her from the dark shadows that had surrounded her since the war had started. After Hogwarts was destroyed, Hermione didn't know where to turn. It had been her home. She wanted to crush those that had ripped her from her home, and hatred consumed her. She become hard, cold, like a Slytherin. She never would have guessed that it would be a Slytherin to set her free.

"What do you want, Granger?"

The first time they had met since Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy was the same conceited bastard he had always been. "Well, Mudblood, talk."

"Do you have to be such a jerk, Malfoy? Forget it. I'm leaving."

She walked away, delicately, swaying her hips knowing that he was too much of a man not to be attracted.

"Wait."

If Hermione had been in a happy mood, which she rarely was these days, she would have smiled.

"Yes?" she asked him, moving her mouth carefully, sensually.

"Would you like to have a seat?"

She smirked inwardly, realizing that Malfoy had the same plan she had. She knew that he could never see her as an equal, and she would bet a vault full of Galleons that he was trying to seduce her, hoping to learn more about the Order of the Pheonix.

She would have been right.

What Draco Malfoy didn't know, was that Hermione was a brilliant seductress. He could never truly win her over.

Many Firewhiskeys later, they ended up back at her flat. "Tell me what it's like to be a Death Eater," she whispered in his ear as he carried her to her room. It had been so easy to get him to talk, and the information turned out to be reliable, so she kept going to see him. He thought that _he_ was getting information out of _her_.

His naivety would become the Order's victory.

But it became too much. Eventually, Hermione realized it wasn't all a game anymore.

They were on opposite sides in a world gone mad. She never suspected, when she joined the Order of the Phoenix, that she would be forced to do all she could to draw information from her childhood enemy. She never suspected that she would actually like it. She never imagined that she would ever feel anything beyond a sense of responsibility to the Order.

He felt it too.

She tried to leave, but each time he convinced her into staying with him.

"We're not hurting anyone," he told her.

No one but themselves.

It was dangerous, sneaking around. They both knew it, but there were too mesmerized, at first by the passion, and then by each other.

"I don't give a damn if you are Muggle born, Granger," he told her once between kisses. "The sex is just too damn good for this to be wrong."

"The girls in my dorm were right," she responded.

"About what? My charming good looks? My decisive wit? My wicked Quidditch skills?"

"No...The fact that Slytherins are only after one thing." She laughed when she said it-She didn't really mind. She liked being with him.

"I _am_ only after one thing," he said, seriously.

"What?"

"You."

"My body, you mean," she said bitterly.

"No," he replied, smiling at her. "You."

He had changed. They both had. Hermione had learned that Draco Malfoy was capable of love.

And so had he.

The war was too heated. It was too much for Hermione, fighting Death Eaters by day and sleeping with one at night. She was afraid that if she stayed with him, she would become weak, lose sight of the goal-ridding the world of Voldemort.

"I can't do this anymore, Draco" she told him, but the assertion was more like a plea, a desperate bid for release.

"You say that each time, Hermione" he said, taking hold of her hand.

How could she tell him that this time was different, that this time, she knew, that if she stayed, if she the consequences would be impossible to cope with?

"What are you fighting against?" he asked. "What is it about me that's so terrible, so horrifying that you can't even look me in the eye? How can you kiss me, let me hold you in my arms, yet refuse to tell me you love me?"

"It's complicated," she answered.

Two words and they held her entire world, the complex intricacies that composed her life.

"I love you." He said it without emotion, as if stating a fact, because that is all it has become. She has refused to allow it to evolve into something more than words. These five words contained their universe, their souls. Everything they had been to each other, everything they could have been, was completely summed up in these two phrases.

And now she is left all alone in the cold, no hands to warm her save her own. Her hands have remained, they are still hers, but her heart is gone. It never belonged to her, it belonged to _him_ and he refused to return it to her.

"Just let me go," she begged, with her eyes more than her words. Her words were strong, demanding, but her eyes were threatening a river.

"You love me." Again, the words were a statement, a declaration. It was not a question, it was not a request for her to acquiesce. It was simply him, stating what he knew to be true.

"I can't."

"But you do."

"But I can't. Don't ask me to be something I'm not. If I stayed, if I let us be together, I wouldn't be _me. _I wouldn't be the person you fell in love with...the person you _think_ you fell in love with."

How could she stay with him? She had no choice. There were two sides in this war. Light versus Dark. Good against Evil. The Death Eaters fighting The Order. Hermione on one side, Draco on the other.

"I will always love you. Always and forever, dead or alive, with you or alone," he said, trying not to feel, wishing he could Summon words of love from her mouth.

"And I will always remember you. Always and forever, dead or alive, with you or alone." It was the closest she could come to a confession.

"So I'll love and you'll remember. And that's it? We'll go our separate ways and never see each other again?"

How could fate be so cruel?

"This isn't about us. It was _never_ about us, Draco! There's a bigger picture here, something beyond us and whatever the hell it is going on between us! We can't forget where ourloyalties lie! You will always be a Malfoy, a pureblood...and I will always be Mudblood Granger. _This isn't about us_."

"What if it was?" He had to know. He couldn't just go away not knowing.

"If it was...If love was the only thing, if we were the only people in the world...If we could just say 'to hell with everything and everyone'...If all that was possible-" She stopped, faltering, knowing that she couldn't give him any more hope.

"Then you'd love me?"

"...Yes." It broke her heart to say it. Falling in love was supposed to be wonderful, magical, spectacular, but this...this hurt.

"And now?"

"And now...I'm sorry." She gave him one last, sweet departing kiss, icy hot, blazing with passion and freezing with the knowledge that it was truly over.

End.

A/N: Please review if you read this. Even if you're one of those people who hates leaving reviews, I'll settle for a 'Hi'. This is the first time I've attempted writing this pairing, so any feedback will be appreciated. Okay, that's not entirely true-If it's completely cruel, I may cry. But otherwise, you know what to do!


	2. Memoirs of a Broken Heart

Disclaimer: All hail J.K. Rowling.

Summary: The one-shot that turned into something longer. Draco's side of the story comes out.

Draco Malfoy paces the floor, his expensive shoes clicking on the marble. Each step reverberates throughout the room, the noise nearly as deafening as the silence he has grown accustomed to. Only one sound is lonelier than his echoing footsteps, and that sound follows him everywhere.

He's heard it since she left him.

After their last kiss, the sound filled his ears, sharply, clearly-the bitter sound of his heart breaking.

_Reparo_ doesn't fix a broken heart.

Tears fall so quickly, so easily.

This is what his life has become. A shadow. A remnant of what he had been, what he could have been.

Hermione Granger was a dementor.

That last kiss sucked the soul out of him.

The plan had been so simple, so deceptively easy.

Meet the Mudblood.

Seduce her.

Get information for Lord Voldemort.

Run like hell.

But he had fallen into the trap so easily.

"_The best laid plans of mice and men, Draco," she told him after their first night together._

"_Gang aft agley-Robert Burns," he responded automatically, caressing her hair._

_She had been impressed. "Could it be that even Purebloods have a bit of culture?" she teased._

It had been a warning. He understood that now. She might has well have told him that it wouldn't last, that nothing could last between them.

The net of lies (and lust) they were caught up in would eventually unravel.

It had been easy, at the beginning.

_An owl flew into Draco's window. _

"_Aren't you a pretty thing," he said, kissing its beak. The owl changed shape, golden feathers turning into a mane of curly golden brown hair._

"_I know," Hermione answered._

They knew it was dangerous. They excused themselves, blamed it on the craziness of the war, the hormones, the pent up frustration, the chance of getting information for their respective sides. Neither admitted anything beyond loyalty and a mutual physical attraction.

Draco Malfoy was a fool. He had allowed the love of his life to escape. Yet he could remember a time when he hadn't wanted to see her face ever again.

"_Draco, don't!" she screamed as he threw an expensive vase against the wall._

"_Don't what?!" His voice was low, menacing. "You're a spy, admit it. This is all a game to you. Crabbe and Goyle almost died because of you, you filthy mudblood whore."_

"_Fine. I'll admit it." Tears were pouring down her face. "I work for the Order. I have been since graduating from Hogwarts. I slept with you with the intent of getting information to pass to the Order. I used you, shamelessly. I _am_ a whore. I sold myself to you, slept with you, so that others can sleep, safe from Voldemort. Is that what you wanted to hear?"_

_He stared at the wall silently. His eyes traveled down to the small prisms of glass that had landed on the floor, each broken piece of vase catching the light._

"_You thought you were smart, didn't you," she taunted. "You thought you would be rewarded. Bragged to all your friends that you had seduced me and gotten information from me, didn't you. It didn't even click, immediately, that the information I passed on to you was worthless. And you didn't think that I would realize everything you told me was also worthless. You should be more careful where you hide your papers, Malfoy."_

_He slapped her._

_She punched him in the face._

_He cursed and grabbed her, cradling her in his arms. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. It doesn't matter, any of it. You're you. I'm me. We can't change any of it, but we can be together, can't we?"_

"_For now. Just know this-I slept with you to help the Order. I never expected to actually _like _it."_

_Their lips met, the kiss two parts passion, one part despair, and a hint of something neither of them were willing to admit existed._

Love.

He could admit that now. She still couldn't.

His owls always flew back to him, hungry and still carrying the letters he sent to her. She had disappeared without a trace. Yet something connected their hearts, something that couldn't be broken. But that chain could only be felt-he couldn't follow it to find her at the other end. There _was_ no end. They're love was like a rainbow. No matter how hard he searched for the pot of gold that was Hermione, he wouldn't find her.

"_Change sides," she didn't say it pleadingly. She was resigned-She knew Draco would never switch sides._

"_I can't." His eyes were hollow all the time now-except when he looked at her._

"_The Order needs you, Draco."_

"_My family needs me, Hermione." He couldn't bear becoming a blood traitor. Even if it meant betraying his heart._

"_I need you more."_

"_And if I stay on Voldemort's side, it will be easier to keep you safe. I'm a trusted follower. I'll know if he's planning to hurt you, and I can protect you." He kissed her forehead._

"_I don't want to be protected! I don't want to be coddled and cradled and babied! I'm a grown woman, Draco-or haven't you noticed?"_

"_Trust me, I've noticed," he muttered under his breath._

She was gone.

If only he had gone to her side. But he couldn't help it being a Death Eater, could he? He couldn't help it any more than Hermione could help being muggle born.

Damn his pureblood integrity.

A/N: So this story was supposed to be a one-shot, but I decided to continue. What do you guys think-should I add more?


	3. Broken

Disclaimer: Not mine. Any of it. You have J.K. Rowling to thank for the characters. All I take credit for is playing around with them a bit.

Summary: We find out the outcome of the war, and Hermione is reconnected with the wizarding world.

**It's Not About Us**

Chapter 3: Broken

The war was over.

There had been no definite winner or loser. Harry Potter and Voldemort had both been killed in the final battle, and it was impossible for their respective followers to determine a victor. There had been so many deaths on both sides.

Now the Ministry was caught up in a political battle, torn between the two sides. The Death Eaters, after the death of Voldemort had become less radical. They no longer wanted to control the world and kill muggles and muggle borns. They had drastically reformed once their leader was gone, and had abolished their more extreme practices and become a political party. While many in the Ministry were less than eager to allow former Death Eaters any position in the government, what could they do? There were so many of them, and now that the threat of world domination and annihilation was past, they were left with no choice but to accept them.

Hermione knew none of that. After she saw her friends killed on the battlefield, she had dissolved into the shadows of the muggle world-the normal world-where she had once fit in so well. Still, memories plagued her.

"_Hermione, stop spinning in circles! You're making me dizzy!" Draco scolded._

"_But isn't lovely?" she gasped in mid-spin. "It's snowing! _SNOW!" _She was struck by the beauty of it, the beauty that could still somehow exist in such a messed up world._

"_I fail to see why snow is so special,'Mione. It's beautiful, I'll admit it, but it doesn't last." Draco watched the snowflakes on her face dissolve into tiny drops of water and roll of her face. "It's nice while it's there, but eventually...it leaves."_

Hermione had melted long ago. In order to remain a snowflake, she would have to leave Draco who was all too warm.

She had to flee.

Part of Hermione wondered why Draco hadn't come looking for her. _He doesn't really love you, _her mind taunted. _You're supposed to be clever-you should never have believed all that shit. As if a Malfoy could ever love!_

It was too late, anyway. She had transcended all feeling, all emotion. She was clinging to life only physically-her heart had long since drifted away. Even if Draco Malfoy walked into her house (house, not home, because a home should be someplace happy) Hermione wasn't sure she would be able to reciprocate any feelings he may still have for her.

The war was over.

Draco Malfoy had suddenly become very popular in the wizarding world. With the threat of Voldemort gone, he was suddenly viewed as 'misunderstood'. Harry Potter was dead and the world needed a new hero. Rita Skeeter painted a tragic portrait of the young Mr.Malfoy as being "forced to the Dark Side by a tyrannical father".

"What a load of rubbish," he said to himself. The publicity was all a bunch of lies. He had willingly become a Death Eater. He loyally supported Voldemort. He had honestly hated mudbloods. Now the press was out to make him sound like some sort of misbegotten hero, while he was probably the only person that would admit he was a son of a bitch and didn't deserve to live. The absurdity of the situation clutched his heart and squeezed it, but it didn't matter. There was nothing left that could effect him anymore.

"_Damn it Weasley, where is she?"_

_Ronald Weasley looked terrified at the thought of a Malfoy being in his home._

"_Where's who?"_

"_Granger."_

"_I don't know," Ron glared at the angry blond, "And even if I did, I sure as hell wouldn't tell a bastard like you."_

_The Weasley family had been Draco's last hope. If they didn't know where Hermione was, then who could? "How could she just disappear like that?!"_

_Ron looked at Draco calculatingly, and a moment of understanding passed between them. "I know 'Mione. When she's ready to come back, she will."_

_Draco gazed at Ron defeatedly. "Thanks," he murmured, turning to leave. As he pulled the door shut behind him, he heard Ron's soft voice, "I love her, too."_

Draco tried to reassure himself. "It's only a matter of time," became his mantra.

The question was- How much time?

Time enough for his hair to turn gray and his skin to shrivel up? Time enough for him to beg the aid of firewhiskey to help him forget? Time enough to watch all the stars in the sky burn out, leaving him alone in blackness?

Or did Draco Malfoy need to make his own time?

The Golden Trio had become nothing more than a memory to the wizarding world.

Harry Potter, the valiant boy who had headstrongly sacrificed his life for his cause. Ronald Weasley, who did his best to pretend life hadn't changed so drastically. And Hermione Granger, the girl who had mysteriously vanished. When they were spoken of, it was in reverent tones, the way people talk of heroes, and historical figures they know they will never meet. Harry, Ron, and Hermione had become a legend-and nothing more. The only aspects of their lives that remained important were the parts that had already happened-speculation of where they were now faded into oblivion.

Everyone just wanted to move on. So while Harry Potter was celebrated with parades and holidays, Ron and Hermione were shifted to the side. Nobody wants to dwell on a fallen hero, desperately clinging to the glory days, therefore Ron was allowed to live in quiet obscurity. Hermione Granger was presumed dead-people had long since given up searching for her.

They had forgotten.

And yet, something still connected Draco to Hermione. Something that couldn't be explained away, even with all the time that had passed.

Ginevra Weasley often wondered what had become of her friend. She remembered what it had been like, in the last days before the battle...before Harry had died. She remembered the haunted look that lingered in Hermione's eyes. And she saw the same look, even now, after all this time, on the young Malfoy's face.

So she tracked her down. Months of complicated magic spells and tracking down books ensued until finally, she found Hermione. Once she found the proper spell that revealed Hermione's location, she apparated immediately.

Hermione looked up from her kitchen table to see Ginny Weasley looking appraisingly around the place. "Gin." Her face barely registered any shock, as if she had been anticipating something happening.

"Hallo," Ginny attempted cheerfully, but in the next moment both witches were crying and desperately clinging to each other.

When they finally pulled away Hermione looked at the redhead, "How'd you find me? This place is supposed to be unplottable."

Ginny evaded the question. "Why'd you do it? Do you realize that everyone's been simply _frantic_ looking for you?"

"Ginny, I didn't want to hurt anyone, believe me. I just...wanted to keep _myself_ from hurting more. I needed to be somewhere that would let me forget, someplace I could maybe, just _maybe_, try to live a normal life." She knew that somehow, Ginny would understand. She always had some sort of sixth sense and had been able to empathize with others.

Like now. "It didn't work, did it?"

Hermione looked down. "No." She looked so tired, so _forlorn_ as if everything she had ever believed in had vanished.

Because it _had_.

"But I still don't understand it, Ginny. How could you find me?"

Ginny looked at her friend with grief stricken eyes. "There's a spell...very difficult to manage and not well known. It allows people to find each other if the need is strong enough...If there is reason so great that these two people need to find each other."

Hermione's eyes widened in recognition. "_Infractus Animus_?" she gasped. "But...that's supposed to be nearly impossible!"

"It was. The connection between two people has to be very strong, and they have to be experiencing similar emotions at the time the spell is cast."

"And...you cast the spell," Hermione was shocked. The complexity involved in casting _Infractus Animus_ was staggering.

"Yes...You see, Hermione," Ginny's eyes filled with tears. "I felt the same way about Harry as you do about Draco."

The name didn't cause Hermione to burst into tears. Her composure held and she looked almost the same as she had moments before. But her eyes dulled over and her shoulders hunched slightly. It wasn't too great a change. Just enough to make her look..._broken._

"Hermione," Ginny continued, "He needs you...We all do."

A/N: Well, there it is! I know the style has changed somewhat, but it had to. It simply wasn't practical to keep going the same way it was. I needed to fit in more dialogue-I couldn't keep it mostly description as it had been, especially because I find that in a longer story that tends to get a bit annoying to read.

I also know that readers may wonder, "Why didn't Draco just cast the spell himself?" There's a good reason, trust me, that will be explained later. Oh, and _Infractus Animus_ is Latin for 'Broken Soul'.

Finally, I'd like to thank all my reviewers for their lovely reviews! They mean so much! And, um, would it be too much to ask for more?

LavvyLav


	4. Crystal Lucidity

Disclaimer: Ah to be insanely talented and fabulously wealthy. Unfortunately, not being J.K. Rowling, I am neither.

**It's Not About Us**

Chapter 4:Crystal Lucidity

Hermione didn't know what to do. She couldn't just go back to him, could she? It would be too...simple. The relationship between her and Draco had been marked by complexity. With them, nothing was clear cut...crystal clear.

"_Funny phrase, 'crystal clear'" slurred Hermione after another firewhiskey._

"_Huh?" Draco traced an alcohol-dipped finger around her lips. "Watcha talkin' for, anyway?" Hermione giggled as his own lips grazed her neck._

"_I'm serious!" she said after a moment with a hint of drunken indignation. "They say crystal is clear, yet if you hold it up to the light...there's so many colors."_

_Now Draco laughed._

"_What?"_

"_You, my dear," he drawled, "are the most coherent drunk I have ever met."_

And how could she know that anything between them would still work? If she returned to the wizarding world, everyone would know. She couldn't disappear anymore and any relationship she had with Draco would become public, high-profile. Could they withstand that kind of pressure?

"It's okay, you know," said Ginny after two tense days spent in near silence.

"What is?" Hermione asked, startled. She was still unaccustomed to having someone around.

"To show emotion. To tell me how you feel. We used to share everything, Hermione! And now you've turned into some sort of ice queen."

"Well I' sorry if my life _sucks_ Ginny! I'm sorry if I can't cater to your need for small talk. Shall I give it a go then? Oh, lovely weather we've been having. I know some people don't like it but I happen to be rather _fond_ of gray skies and clouds and slush on the ground. Puts me in a right _cheery_ mood don't you know!"

Ginny sat there, watching Hermione.

'If only we had some real hoest to goodness snow! Then we could make _snow angels_ and have_ snowball fights_ and maybe even build a bloody _SNOWMAN_!!! Is that what you want me to say Ginny? Pretend that everything is normal and I'll find a way out of all this? Will that bring Harry back?"

At the mention of Harry, Ginny lost all control.

"_Don't go, Harry," Ginny pleaded. "Don't be a martyr."_

"_I have to go love. They _need_ me."_

"_Well they can just need somebody else! Why does it always have to be _you_?! Just because you're the _sainted_ Harry Potter. They can get along without you. They may need you, but so do I."_

"_I'm sorry. I'll come back to you, darling. You know I will." She opened her mouth to protest but her caught her lips between her own. She clung to him, kissing Harry out of sheer desperation. This wasn't the gentle kiss of lovers. It was rough and aggressive, the kiss of two people who need each other._

_He left. That was the last time they were together._

"I'm sorry, Ginny." Hermione wrapped her arms around the redhead. It was good, touching another person after all this time.

"There's something more you don't know, Hermione. Something no one else knew. Something that helped me find you-

When Harry left...I was carrying his baby."

A/N: It will be explained. I promise! I know it's been a while, but if you review, I promise to update as soon as I can.


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